A Distributed, Object-oriented Architecture for Platform-independent Machine Vision

This paper describes the design of a client/server architecture for machine vision. The server is constructed as a virtual machine, permitting client software to be platform-independent. The client architecture consists of a number of proxy classes that hide the details of server communication, simplifying the construction of client applications. Serializable objects are used for communication between clients and the server. Both TCP/IP sockets and POSIX message queues are currently supported for client/server communication. The server is implemented under VxWorks, a real-time operating system (RTOS), executing on a Motorola processor. It currently supports hardware developed by Imaging Technology, Incorporated. Client software is implemented under VxWorks, LynxOS, another RTOS, and Linux, executing on both Motorola and Intel processors.